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Recent reviews by val ≽^•ω•^≼

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Showing 1-10 of 40 entries
1 person found this review helpful
169.5 hrs on record (136.3 hrs at review time)
very fun much to my surprise!

I've never much subscribed to the team-fighting hero shooter formula, I really struggled to get into Overwatch, and I can just about tolerate Rainbow Six and even then it's often a miserable experience.

I don't know what it is, but there is a certain attraction to this game that has kept me hooked. So I'll just go through what I like and don't like after 136 hours and ranking up to grandmaster in season 0.

Pros:
- Combat is punchy, it feels responsive (when you have a good ping) and when you do get eliminations it feels GOOD. Wiping a whole team for an ace with a singular ultimate is a gratifying experience. There is a very blatant learning curve to a lot of classes, which I don't think is a bad thing, you can essentially win games all the same using point and click characters as you can with characters that have involved tech and complex playstyles.
- The game has a lot of variety, even for only being out for a few short amount of time! There are a huge number of characters to play as, all offering their own niche or upside. This has been incredibly important to me because it allows me to fulfil roles as per my confidence, e.g. each support class has varying levels of difficulty depending on your playstyle so you can really get comfortable with the one that resonates most with you.
- The maps are pretty, the artstyle is pretty, the characters are all very nicely made! Some of them are boasting 'assets' which probably border onto gooner territory but aside from that, this has been the first game in a LONG TIME where I've actually wanted to get skins for characters.
- Speaking of skins, Venom is MOVING MOUNTAINS, that brother has an gravitational pull around those cheeks, they are infinitely dense orbital bodies, there is not a bakery in the world that can store all that cake.
- Competitive is fairly linear, you might have bad games and you might get frustrated, but in a pretty short amount of time I managed to get to grandmaster with just one friend, it's difficult but it's not the kind of difficult that makes you question why you installed. It is VERY reliant on your ability to play with your team, and often times a loss can be attributed to you being too stubborn to swap off a character (god knows I learnt that the hard way).
- So far, VERY GOOD dev-community interaction, within a month we already have new characters, new content, balancing changes and by the looks of things, a pretty substantial future ahead of the game.
- Very few bugs, very few performance issues (aside from when a strange uses his damn portal), servers are pretty decent and I've had practically no crashes or game breaking jank, this is incredibly rare for a new release.

Cons:
- While I did say combat is very gratifying, this is entirely limited by hero balancing, this can be attributed to your team composition but there are times where you will just be constantly wiped by characters that have no clear counter other than copying them. For the longest time (although this may change with the recent nerf) hawkeye was capable of 1-hit killing almost any DPS/Support and basically melting the health of tanks at a rate that only a support ult could prevent. This meant he had an almost 100% ban rate in competitive, and this complaint extends to a few other characters.
- On a similar notes, some ults are just objectively better than others in the same class, some ults just don't even make sense contextually; Jeff (a character meant to heal and provide support) has an ult that can teamwipe, it grabs every single player in a radius and allows you throw them off a map. Often this can ENTIRELY shift a game in favour of one side, more than ANY DPS ult, even moonknight who is an incredible damage dealer has a comparatively mediocre ult as it only damages slowly in a very small radius. Luna snow is also exclusively banned in competitive because she is capable of nullifying any enemy ult INSTANTLY and then provide total invulnerability to their team for 12 straight seconds, whereas cloak and dagger can be killed midway through ulting.
- PEOPLE ARE VERY STUBBORN, this game has a community that shifts in the direction of being insufferable, from half the team insta-locking DPS and leaving me alone on support to then complaining about a lack of healing because of their poor composition choices. People WILL blame you for all their short-comings and you rarely get much love as a support. People will very often throw if they think somebody is insulting their ability to play and you are often forced to pick roles that revolve around them because they won't listen to advice (this is not always applicable but has become common enough to be the standard).
- Some minor complaints like the fact that we have a "Play of the game" style highlight for every player (which I'll accidentally click while commending someone, you'll see what I mean). I literally don't care to see the highlight of a spiderman who went 4-18, just show me the MVP's best play. The MVP system itself is also really weird, where I'll hit a 40k healing, 50 assists and 30 kills game and lose MVP to a strange (you know who you are) purely because he blocked 30k damage, this wouldn't matter much if it weren't for the fact it gives you EXTRA elo in comp, meaning I lag behind as a support main while my friend farms strange.

tl;dr pretty good game, did not expect to enjoy it much less spend 136 hours on it in a month, plus it's free so you literally lose nothing by giving it a try. It has plenty of upsides that I think outweigh the downsides, make it a fairly stable experience as of now. Tight gameplay, good fun with friends and the only paid aspects are the cosmetics and I'll admit they are very good.
Posted 10 January. Last edited 10 January.
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2 people found this review helpful
0.0 hrs on record
I can't really suggest, unless you like punishing yourself.

I adore the art direction, the music, the uniqueness of the gameplay and characters, and I thoroughly appreciate that we've been provided this as a separate element from the pilot itself to drip-feed some lore, so for that I'm giving a positive review considering I love this project.

But I think the delivery missed a beat, I am willing to keep trying something difficult until I succeed, but issue is the punishment for losing is too substantial, especially considering that the telegraphing of attacks isn't always obvious.
I feel like this would make for an incredible short-rogue like experience, where the buffs you buy are maintained and you lose the items, but unfortunately you're sent back to a fresh start every single time you fall to an enemy that's seemingly a bit too large of a leap harder from the last. Which is incredibly brutal considering there is not much in the way of checkpoints.
Perhaps I'm simply missing the point and there's a system to fighting, but it's not exactly obvious to me and that kind of impacts the overall experience, I just really don't have the patience to watch the same boss cutscene over and over again.

That aside, I want to love this but the it's incredibly frustrating to progress, far less forgiving than the pilot (even though it is a different thing altogether).
Posted 22 December, 2024. Last edited 22 December, 2024.
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290 people found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny
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503.4 hrs on record
Probably one of the greatest games I've played in the past 5 years.
(Spoiler free)

Summary

I don't play story games for very long, if it's 8 hours long, I will play it for 8 hours, even if it's a genuinely amazing game, there is no way to re-experience my first interaction with a title I love, any reruns would just dilute my memory of it.

That said, this is different. This isn't just a story game, this is a narrative masterpiece, mechanically almost perfect and the single longest amount of time I've ever spent on a game of this nature. I struggle to keep hooked on high fantasy but this game exceeded every single expectation I had from the genre.

In short, the game is a turn-based RPG, with dense player interaction, dialogue, story, and an absolute treasure chest when it comes to variety, the combat is practically a sandbox, only limited by your creativity when it comes to turning goblins and human alike into a puddle where their torso used to be.
You're immediately given a fairly substantial task upon first loading in and it's your goal to progress through the story with the aim of resolving it.
However, the steps you take along your path to resolving it entirely shifts the dynamic of whole regions and thus how people treat you as you progress through the story. Eventually, the major task you have becomes a footnote as you're thrown knee-deep into something much larger than you ever anticipated.
Of course, how it actually DOES resolve, whether for the betterment of everyone you've met along the way or to achieve absolute power is entirely up to you.. but you might often find yourself making choices with a special party member in mind ;)

Oh and the CO-OP is absolutely unreal, it from experience (with a good host) works absolutely perfectly and I've essentially completed the entire story 3 times with entirely different groups of people, each time yielding its own absolutely chaotic outcome. It does seriously impact how you interact with companions though as there are a limited number of party slots, so don't take your CO-OP play-through as your sole experience of the game.

Characters

Phenomenal writing, it's very easy to dismiss the companions you find along the way as being relatively abrasive or otherwise uninteresting, but as you progress through the story they begin to open up to you as your relationship (dictated by your actions, through dialogue, interactions with the world or quest outcomes) grows, and thus you gain major introspective with the character.
Every companion has their own quirk, something that they personally want to resolve by the end of the game. If you choose to ignore them they may never achieve that without your help, and potentially abandon you, or worse.
They all react differently to how you roleplay your character, some despising signs of empathy while others seriously admiring it, it creates a situation where the dynamic of your party isn't always relying on you picking the "morally good" answers to get a desirable outcome.. ahem Starfield >.>
Some companions even outright love evil acts, and will encourage you to do them.. oh and of course there's romance so that's always a win if you want to romance someone with the bloodlust of a bag of angry hornets.

Additionally, the non-essential or non-playable characters you find beyond your own party are all intricate in their own right. Some are a little sparser content-wise than others but everyone typically always has something to say, often in regards to events you've caused or partaken in. Even if you don't cross their paths early on, they often show up with unique dialogue later, often remarking about how your actions led them to where they are.
Something I especially enjoy is that often you'll keep seeing characters you save or aid throughout the entire length of the game, gradually finding new ways to give aid back or just give you a little insight to story each time you find them.
A very notable example (without sharing too much detail) is saving a character in something I originally thought was a throw-away gag, where if you choose to (or accidentally) kill them just by pushing the wrong button, it not only locks off a major outcome of a literal end-game quest but makes another entire quest-line marginally harder. Your choices DO matter even if it isn't immediately obvious.

Finally, the "bad guys" in this game are probably my favourite in all of high fantasy media, and while there is an implied major boss that you're seeking out, there's a multitude of equally plot essential bosses you find with their own backstories, and beyond that, even the non-essential bosses are all very fun to fight, all with their own gimmicks which invite you to switch up your playstyle.

Plus, J. K. Simmons, the voice of Cave Johnson, Omni-Man, Stanford Pines.. the yellow M&M for some reason, and basically hundreds of other characters you'll recognise voices my single favourite boss in the whole game.

Story

Dense, utterly dense, packed with scenarios, people to meet, people to kill, people to revive for reasons of questioning them about who killed them.
Quite frankly, 500 hours of content is barely scratching the surface, I'm doing a brand new run as of right now and still discovering things I've never seen before.
There is a deep level of world-building, both direct and indirect, physical and implied, entire regions are impacted by actions delivered long before you even arrived, some are more dangerous than others for explicit plot reasons. There's little stories and quests to be found in the most obscure of places, each with differing outcomes.

I don't think I could ever do the story justice in this section so I won't further elaborate, experience it yourself.

Gameplay

Really not what I expected when I first got into the game, I was a little sceptical because I don't much care of the RPG formula of having all your actions as little buttons at the bottom of your screen, I especially didn't think I would much care for a top-down turn-based point and click style experience.

However, I am genuinely captivated, it isn't just a combat system, it's a sandbox. Every class drastically changes how you approach issues, from getting the perfect position to fireball as a squishy wizards/sorcerers so you don't die first turn, to just paladin charging face first at any inconvenience, and it hitting it with a 7ft sword in the name of your oath for vengeance.
If you're not satisfied with just playing a singular class, you can then sub-class and create absolutely insane builds, my personal favourite being throwzerker (a barbarian that can practically insta-kill most targets by across map throwing OTHER ENEMIES at the targeted enemy)
Alternatively you could just ignore the class system and be a barrelmancer, using explosives of various types to essentially ignite entire battlefields and inconvenience your whole party.
There's legitimately no end to it. If you want to play the game a certain way you probably can, it's absolutely DnD in nature.

The fights can be quite hard at times, but only if you're unprepared or have a poor party dynamic. Sometimes just finding the right gear can shift a whole fight in your favour, even potions I found are incredibly important as some of them can essentially triple your melee damage or let you heal after every kill. The game WANTS you to experiment, go nuts.



TL;DR I could go on for hours about this game, I've barely scratched the surface with this review, but it really is mostly just a letter of love for this game, you won't ever get a good clue of the experience you'll have just from my text. So genuinely try it even if you don't think it's going to be your thing, and better yet, try it with friends. The CO-OP experience is so insanely fun.
Posted 12 November, 2024.
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1 person found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
5.5 hrs on record
legitimately the worst game i've ever played
Posted 9 November, 2024.
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9 people found this review helpful
11.8 hrs on record (10.5 hrs at review time)
Really enjoyable! Even the bits with Jarod!

Summary
Only took me 8-9 hours to get through a full rotation, but I'm already replaying it to go over any of the content I missed on my first run.
However despite it being fairly short, it was a refreshing experience, the game totally flips the typical narrative of being a named main-character, by splitting your experience between a multitude of faceless characters, and instead delivering character development through the various people you'll meet on your way to the border!
It's a funny almost-rogue-like experience, where you're looking to escape the country to flee a tense political climate, but each time you escape (or fail to) you do it all again as a totally different person, until you eventually hit election day and all your interactions throughout depict the ending (and the fate of all those who wanted to/have not escaped yet).

Characters
Some of the characters are quite corny in their delivery, and the dialogue doesn't always flow as well as I'd like, but they were still all charming enough to keep me hooked. I found myself rooting for certain characters at stages and trying to enable the downfall of others to achieve a means to an end. Each have an interesting cross or relevancy to another character and it causes some unexpected turns that make you go "ohhhhhhhh" after making a discovery that was right in front of you the whole time.
The one downside of having your actions split across multiple characters of course is that there's no way to develop your friendship with the main cast, you can only impact how they treat the next character (which usually isn't always that different), and with the fact you're always playing as a teenager, there are several instance where you're being roped into doing something that would be insane to ask of a 14 year old irl..

Story
The world-building is pretty good, there is a clear divide between certain cast members as the result of a totalitarian government attempting to secure permanent rule as long as they can beat a left-leaning moderate in an upcoming election. Throughout the game you're expected to make a multitude of moral and political choices that will impact the course of the story, there often isn't an incredible amount of nuance in your choices (between picking left-wing extremism or apolitical/moderate options, it generally doesn't let you be an outright fascist) but enough that you feel you can at least feel you're making an impact. Your more physical actions do fairly intuitively change the probability of certain events showing up, and thus certain outcomes in the story, but again this is limited by having the lifespan of your characters only contribute to certain segments, which is intentional but can make some runs feel ended prematurely. There is also a degree of show-but-not-tell elements, where every phone number you find can be called in phone boxes, and pictures on dashboards may give hints to relations between cast members, etc.

Gameplay
The game-play is full of fun little quirks, from playing Bella Ciao on a tuba overlooking a motor-home park, to helping two robbers successfully break into a taxi garage. There's always something to keep your attention up when the going gets a little dull. Genuinely thoroughly enjoyed going through the length of searching every corner just to make sure I've covered every action offered to me.
As for the rogue-like aspect, the game is incredibly easy if you try optimise your routes, as you are rarely ever at a lack of resources and most dialogue scenarios can be talked out of if you just don't bother "roleplaying" nullifying the whole gravity of it, so I encourage you instead to actually focus on trying to get the most out of the story instead of going for gold every run. You're only going to get out what you put in, it's less of a true rogue-like survival game and more of a funny twist on life is strange style story delivery.

That all said, well worth the amount I paid for it, especially going into it with very few expectations, oh and, beware of Jarod..
Posted 18 September, 2024. Last edited 18 September, 2024.
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1 person found this review helpful
21.4 hrs on record (14.8 hrs at review time)
[EDIT] Original review was a meme written after a few hours of playing, so this is updating it to correctly reflect how much I enjoyed the relatively short (but sweet) story. Coming from playing Spacemarine 1 all those years ago, it absolutely smashed my expectations out of the water, it was the same experience but coated with heaps of spicy gameplay and tasty visuals, seasoned to perfection.
There is nothing to hate, you can very well be a pedant and insist that that plot-armoured hulks saving mankind by chasing a bunch of bugs isn't exactly fuel for a complex narrative, but who cares, just let yourself enjoy it, you can literally rip the head off a bug twice the size of you and better yet, you can do it in campaign co-op with friends.

This has also been one of the very few times I've actually gone out of my way to use the photo mode, the game is STUNNING, and I say this entirely from the perspective of a 3D Environment Designer, so it's normally typical that I overlook the visuals to favour level design, but not this time. Oh lord, the amount of times I just stopped to watch ensuing battles in the near distance, or gawped at structures falling apart for no other reason than it looking cool.

The combat takes a little getting used to, but after getting into the rhythm of it it's super gratifying to chain attacks between targets, turning bugs into a fine mist as the bolter lets off a hefty noise every single time you fire. The mission objectives aren't greatly involved, but they are nestled in with enough entertaining story-telling and pretty environments that I just couldn't put the game down, anticipating the next gorgeous location for Titus to get into a pickle at.

If you're genuinely a stickler for good lore, I only know it at a surface level so it perfectly appeased me, it has nice links to various factions, and it of course insists on pushing the Ultramarines and Cadians because they're the fan favourites, but it doesn't go deeper than that... And that's fine! I honestly didn't need any more from a third person shooter. The experience you're getting isn't a deep RPG storyline or novel tier narrative, it's just an excuse to cut loose and shoot some bad guys and feel unstoppable while doing it!

tl;dr game is very good, darktide walked so Spacemarine 2 could run, minor issues with booting the game up initially solved by using the alternative .exe in the game files, otherwise the game runs silky smooth even on my fire hazard of a laptop, gameplay is satisfying and I get to see my beloved titus again <3
Posted 9 September, 2024. Last edited 10 September, 2024.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
10.2 hrs on record
short, but truly enjoyable, a great callback to the classic wolfenstein 2009 and the occult elements.

there was a lot that could've been expanded upon, some characters that died quicker than you could get to know them and the plot progressed incredibly quickly, but in terms of raw gameplay it was as much as I could ask for, quick snappy combat with small elements of stealth.

if anything it was a nice setup for the later games in the chronological sequence
Posted 8 July, 2024.
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20 people found this review helpful
5 people found this review funny
0.0 hrs on record
here you go, perhaps my money can go towards better servers?

.. no?

:(
Posted 29 April, 2024. Last edited 29 April, 2024.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
5.1 hrs on record
honestly a throwback to simpler times,

the game and the following iterations have been bandwagoned by children, and much of the humour a literal decade old, by no means a icon of comedy nor the most involved game in the world.

does it matter? absolutely not. the children playing this game today would be the same as myself at 11 scanning through armor games, for a flash game to play on the school computer the day before we left for Christmas break.

the nostalgia makes it worthwhile, i neglected to get this game for a long time because i would just be paying for a series i formerly played for free years ago, but the slightly polished visuals and general quality of life features, just fill me with a sense of joy, something great from my childhood cleaned up and made totally available after the death of flash.

even the parts i've never tried before gave me a giggle every now and then, it wasn't completely dry by today's standard, so just let yourself enjoy the slightly juvenile writing, tuck away your brutal criticisms for just this once and give it a try.
Posted 24 April, 2024.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
26.9 hrs on record (21.4 hrs at review time)
upload videos to ghost liveleak and earn bank
Posted 3 April, 2024. Last edited 8 October, 2024.
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Showing 1-10 of 40 entries